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Sidestepping Mac Discrimination
So, I’m wrestling with a way to achieve real, honest-to-goodness color correction within standardized specs. Came across Bob Zelin’s solution in the latest edition of the Cow magazine, which is Hamlet’s Vidscope-vxHD married to, dare I say, a PC. Sounds great except I have to buy another computer (and a PC, at that), and another high-end capture card (I already have a Kona LH in a Mac). Sorry, Bob, but I hate that.
So, I inquired of Hamlet when the Mac version of this software is going to be released. Try never. But, their product rep did provide an interesting prospect:
“due to the direct show filters that Vidscope uses there will not be a Mac version, however we have had a few people using Vidscope on a Mac running under one of the XP emulators.”Has anyone out there used the Vidscope-vxHD software on their Mac with an XP emulator? If so, any satisfaction there? Any serious issues? If it works, I would so love to not only save the loot for extra dedicated hardware, but also keep my Mac environment “pure.”
David -
8 Replies
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So instead of buying a cheap PC, you are going to buy another dedicated mac and run it under an emulator that it want designed to run on? At that point, you might as well pony up for a dedicated hardware scope, or at least buy half of one and pay the rest later.
Jeremy
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Well, I’ve never run under PC emulation, but why can’t I just install emulation software on my edit station Mac that has the Kona card? When I do the color correction pass, it seems like it can become dedicated to that function under simulator software just for that purpose, no? Why can’t my edit station Mac serve the dual purpose? Runs under OS X in the project creation phase for FCP, AE, etc., and then runs under XP for the final step of color correction. Not sure why that solution won’t work. What am I not getting here?
David -
[David Donnenfield] “What am I not getting here?”
That you needed a dedicated computer no matter if it’s a PC or Mac. You take the output of your mac and feed it to the input of the Hamlet which then becomes a scope using a computer monitor hooked up to that computer. You can’t loop out from your Kona to your Kona and expect to run FCP and whatever emulation program you need for XP and toggle back and froth from FCP to cc and then toggle back to the scope software. Make sense?
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Yeah, makes sense now. Can’t run the Hamlet under simulated XP AND Final Cut under OS X simultaneously or expect to toggle back and forth. Dang, someone needs to fix that!
So, I currently don’t have any scopes except what’s in FCP 5.1, and I’m not sure how trustworthy they are. We use ’em, but we also salt to taste based on what we see on the computer monitors and what we see on the Cinema Display from the Kona card.
Is that Matrox MXO any kind of an improvement? Doesn’t give you scopes does it? -
No, it doesn’t. It will allow you to ‘calibrate’ and LCD, but it doesn’t have a scope.
You should start looking around for an external scope that you can live with and that’s affordable, or upgrade to FCS2 and use the scopes in Color which seem to be pretty accurate.
Jeremy
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A few things:
1- Bob’s article was pointing out that building a scope on a PC was much cheaper than buying an HD scope from Harris, Leader or Tektronix. That is 100% true, but, as you pointed out, it’s still not that cheap, and you do have to find a place for the PC.
2- It’s waaaaaay cheaper to knock together a PC with a Decklink HD card than it is to buy a Mac Pro for this. If you know how to use a screwdriver & have ever installed RAM or a hard drive, you can assemble your own PC from scratch. It will take you longer to price & research the components than it will to assemble them all. Just take a look at Hamlet’s BMD’s minimum requirements & go up a notch or 3 from there. You’ll probably save something like $2k over the cost of any Mac Pro with any Kona. And at least $5k over the cost of a rasterizing scope from Harris, leader or Tektronix.
3- There are some competing products for the Mac. You might be able to run them on a used G4 or G5 PowerMac along with a Decklink HD card. For starters, Take a look at https://www.scopebox.com/
4- I’m pretty sure that you can’t run a Windows emulator & FCP or Color at the same time. And if you could I would expect it to be very unstable.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
This may not be what you are looking for, but the Panasonic LCD monitor (BT-LH2600W) has a built in waveform monitor. It superimposes over the image and you can select which corner it sets in. Cool feature, great monitor, really good price.
-Parke
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Whether or not it solves my issue, at least now I know what I want for Christmas. Thanks.
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